The Bible is literature as well as a sacred text. For this reason, the application of contemporary methods of literary criticism to the study of Scripture can yield rich benefits. Robert Karris' examination of Luke's Passion account exemplifies this approach. Karris argues that Luke reveals his theology through his artistry, particularly in the themes he chooses to develop and the means by which he does so. These themes provide Karris with an important insight into two questions: Why, in Luke's understanding, was Jesus crucified, and what was the significance of that death? Faithfulness is one more important theme Karris discovers in Luke's Gospel. Luke's Jesus portrays God as endlessly faithful, forgiving, and merciful, even to those unfaithful to him. Justice also surfaces as a clear theme in Luke. Jesus associated with outcasts and preached justice toward victims of his day. When the religious leaders of that time apposed this life-style of justice, Jesus assumed the role of the suffering righteous one. The author concludes by examining Luke's interest in the eating habits of Jesus. By no accident was Jesus slandered as a drunkard and glutton. Hies practice of eating with the unrighteous asserted that the seats at God's banquet table were reserved for the outcasts and the sinners. Karris's study shows that Luke saw the reason for Jesus's death to be rooted in the reason for his life. His conclusions will have value for both the student of Scripture and the individual or group interested in the issues of justice and society.

In this completely revised and updated edition, François Bovon provides a critical assessment of the last fifty-five years of scholarship on Luke-Acts. The study divides thematically, with individual chapters covering the subjects of history and eschatology, the role of the Old Testament, Christology, the Holy Spirit, conversion, and the church. Each chapter begins with a consideration of the exegetical and theological problems unique to each theme in Luke-Acts before providing a detailed survey and critique of contemporary English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian New Testament scholarship.

Mark Byford's 'The Annunciation: A Pilgrim's Quest' explores through conversations with clerics, theologians, historians and laypersons the encounter between the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, a meeting that may be a pivotal point in Christianity. Has the status and significance of the Annunciation been lost in today's world?

Robert Karris spreads before us a delightful feast of information about food themes in the Gospel of Luke. In a lively style of writing, Karris describes the food and drink popular in Jesus' day, eucharistic implications, and the social roles Jesus assumes in relation to food.

Of many possible approaches to the study of the Third Gospel, this author has opted for a thematic approach, realizing that certain aspects of Lucan theology will thereby be highlighted at the expense of others. The examination of many distinct themes, despite their frequent overlapping, favours an appreciation of Lucan theology which is more analytic than synthetic. Notwithstanding the analytic emphasis of the thematic approach, the unity of Lucan theology will inevitably appear, inasmuch as all these themes are ultimately intelligible only as variations on the overriding Lucan theme of salvation in Christ. An intelligent reading of the Gospel presupposes an awareness of the individual writer's themes. These themes intersect and illuminate each other. Several themes often occur in the same periscope. The themes of one Gospel will often be found in the others; however, the perspective of the individual writer will inevitably color their treatment. None of the themes treated in this study has been selected on the assumption that it is exclusively Lucan. This study does not aim at an exhaustive treatment of the themes selected. Such treatment might easily require a book for each theme. An attempt has been made to sketch a sufficiently large number of themes from the third Gospel which as an ensemble might lead to an awareness of their subtle orchestration in the hands of the writer whose theological perspective unidies into a meaningful work of art, intelligence and grace.

Mikeal Parsons, a leading scholar on Luke and Acts, examines cultural context and theological meaning in Luke in this addition to the well-received Paideia series. This commentary, like each in the projected eighteen-volume series, proceeds by sense units rather than word-by-word or verse-by-verse. Paideia commentaries explore how New Testament texts form Christian readers by attending to the ancient narrative and rhetorical strategies the text employs, showing how the text shapes theological convictions and moral habits, and making judicious use of maps, photos, and sidebars in a reader-friendly format.

David Moessner proposes a new understanding of the relation of Luke’s second volume to his Gospel to open up a whole new reading of Luke’s foundational contribution to the New Testament. For postmodern readers who find Acts a ‘generic outlier,’ dangling tenuously somewhere between the ‘mainland’ of the evangelists and the ‘Peloponnese’ of Paul—diffused and confused and shunted to the backwaters of the New Testament by these signature corpora—Moessner plunges his readers into the hermeneutical atmosphere of Greek narrative poetics and elaboration of multi-volume works to inhale the rhetorical swells that animate Luke’s first readers in their engagement of his narrative. In this collection of twelve of his essays, re-contextualized and re-organized into five major topical movements, Moessner showcases multiple Hellenistic texts and rhetorical tropes to spotlight the various signals Luke provides his readers of the multiple ways his Acts will follow "all that Jesus began to do and to teach" (Acts 1:1) and, consequently, bring coherence to this dominant block of the New Testament that has long been split apart. By collapsing the world of Jesus into the words and deeds of his followers, Luke re-configures the significance of Israel’s "Christ" and the "Reign" of Israel’s God for all peoples and places to create a new account of ‘Gospel Acts,’ discrete and distinctively different than the "narrative" of the "many" (Luke 1:1). Luke the Historian of Israel’s Legacy combines what no analysis of the Lukan writings has previously accomplished, integrating seamlessly two ‘generically-estranged’ volumes into one new whole from the intent of the one composer. For Luke is the Hellenistic historian and simultaneously ‘biblical’ theologian who arranges the one "plan of God" read from the script of the Jewish scriptures—parts and whole, severally and together—as the saving ‘script’ for the whole world through Israel’s suffering and raised up "Christ," Jesus of Nazareth. In the introductions to each major theme of the essays, this noted scholar of the Lukan writings offers an epitome of the main features of Luke’s theological ‘thought,’ and, in a final Conclusions chapter, weaves together a comprehensive synthesis of this new reading of the whole.